Back To school
I
For the first twenty-five years of teaching, I looked forward to the first day. If I had
taught summer school, I would have liked another week or so, but I was ready. However, there would come a day in late October when the folks, who had taught summer school, including me, would be walking down the hall one afternoon and we would turn the corner and walk smack-dab into a brick wall. We hadn’t realized we needed a longer break until bam! And then of course it was too late. If I hadn’t taught summer school, I was ready by mid-August to get back to school, anxious to get back into the swing of things.
Everybody looked good the first day. Lots of teachers were dressed up. Many of the white teachers had tans, they had lost five pounds of that old winter fat, their clothes fit a bit better and they had a little bounce in their step, a tiny swing in their hips, as they hurried from one meeting to another. The women looked especially good—a little sexier, a little younger and a little bit more enthusiastic.
That was all destined to change over the course of the coming year. The white teachers would lose their tan, take on a pasty look as the year dragged on. The black teachers would go from the fresh look of summer to kind of a dull, gray, dusty complexion. But that would all come later. On Tuesday, everybody was bright and fresh and full of optimism. Many of them were Cub fans, after all, and this was ‘the next year’ that they had been waiting for. We were excited to see each other. Many of us hadn’t seen each other all summer.
“What were every body’s summer vacations like?”
“Did you really work as a house painter all summer?”
“Do you still like selling beer at the ball park? And will you still be doing it weekends?”
“Did you find a new babysitter? We hope she works out better than the last one.” (And hopefully, we won’t have to hear your litany of daily complaints.)
There was a lot of catching up to do. We wanted to here if Maryanne’s daughter got off to college. “Was Tom’s son’s wedding as lovely as everybody imagined it would be? Where are the pictures?”
“Was Pete still dating Angela?”
And, “Did Ken have another new girlfriend in addition to his wife? Just one?”
Everybody got there early for coffee and rolls. Bubbly and excited, we headed for our first meeting. It was the same old, same old. The only interesting stuff was the introduction of the new teachers. And, then it was on to attendance: tardies, cuts and absences. A little bit about discipline: “Remember each teacher has to be his or her own disciplinarian. The office can’t take care of everything. It’s your job to see that it doesn’t get serious enough to warrant outside help.” And then a special reminder about the seriousness of controlling and monitoring hall traffic, the need to get to one’s hall guard post on time. And especially, “If every teacher could stand at their doors until the halls were cleared, we wouldn’t have a hall problem.” But of course it never worked and we always had a hall problem.
I was the union delegate. I always got a minute at the end. “When you get your rosters, check to see that your classes are in compliance with class size. If not, I can take care of it right away. And it’s easier to do it now. Just let me know.” Class size was one of the few things that we felt that we had a little control over, at least in high school. Even when the classes were in compliance, they were still way too big. Much too big when all the literature said, “Individualize, try a variety of activities to match different learning styles. Don’t teach to the whole class; help individuals learn at their own pace.”
By the day’s second meeting, usually the department meeting, the bubbles were getting a bit flat. But still we were all looking forward to an early and long lunch and some beer. The department chair tried to start out positively. She’d re-introduce the new teachers. We all marveled at how young they looked. And we wondered, “Were we ever that young; did we ever look that good; were women that sexy twenty years ago?”
And then, she got serious, There was only a limited amount of paper for the risograph copier. If people didn’t use it sparingly, she’d have to ration the paper. She wouldn’t like it, but she would, if we forced her. “Fair’s fair, after all.”
“No books until the second, maybe the third week, give the students a chance to get here, get the program changes taken care of and get your classes organized and then we can think about books.” This was always met with a groan, especially in English. Many teachers don’t really need a book every day, but they liked the comfort of having them there just in case. “A nice back-up just in case” they’d mumble. “A crutch”, the department chair would sigh.
I was in charge of the English Department bookroom. Already the teachers were coming up to me. Couldn’t they just get a room set? Could they just get in for a minute and check, double check how many copies of English Literature: From Beowulf to GBS there really were. They would stand extra close, almost touching. Their bodies hovering just near enough, trying to tantalize, hoping that I might say, “OK, just this once.”
“Take the rest of day to get your rooms ready; remember, you can pick up your class rosters; don’t forget lesson plans are due at the end of the week; a bulletin board in each room would be nice; we need a volunteer to do the department’s hall bulletin board; don’t forget to get a signed book card for every student when we do check out books. And she’d conclude with a sigh and a whisper, “Don’t spend the whole afternoon at lunch, remember you’re getting paid for a whole day, try and get back and do a few things.” And then she’d whisper, “Jimmie’s?” “At Hyde Park, it was always Jimmie’s”, we’d stake out the middle room. Others would go to Medici’s, especially the ones who would fight over the bill, who didn’t believe in simply adding 20% and dividing the bill.

II
Just three hours ago our spirits were soaring; our heads were in the clouds.
Over Labor Day weekend, and even coming to work that morning, I had made plans. No more procrastination—as soon as I collected the papers, I’d grade them, record and hand them back and even take time to discuss them. I promised myself that finally I’d reread all those stories I had assigned over the years and try a fresh new approach. No more of the same of old same old. No more winging it. Leave the ad-libbing to the late night TV punsters. All those newspaper and journal articles that I had snipped all summer had lots of good ideas. I’d try some of them.
The teachers who took summer classes came back all fired up. They were going to do journaling, have a class room library, let the kids read young adult literature. Get the kids ‘hooked on books’ and then they’d worry about the classics. Hey, they were going to slow down, read less, but have the kids drill down, read more carefully. Read something contemporary, maybe try some black lit. It never worked. The system wore them down. Other teachers thought the idea of teaching Judy Blum was a hoot, “You can’t be serious?”
There were no books for what they wanted to do. The department chair would repeat, “It’s not our year to order books. You should have told me last spring; I can’t order books today and have them here tomorrow. What are you thinking? Are you thinking?” Some of this isn’t said out loud, but it’s in the air. If you want to do something different do it on the QT, get your own books. “Order a room set from Dell. Make the kids buy them.” One developed a sixth sense after awhile. One learned the lay of the land. It helped if you were young, attractive, especially good or very gregarious. It made life easier.
Driving south on Lake Shore Drive or north on the Dan Ryan we’d all have these pep talks with ourselves. Boy we were up, we were ready, we’d do it all and we’d do it right.
Later in the year, we’d all read the articles in the fancy ed journals or more likely in Parade Magazine—Johnny can’t read, can’t read a map, still doesn’t know his tables, and worst of all, he can’t write. Those articles laid a guilt trip on most of us and ruined many a perfectly fine Sunday afternoon. We’d take every one of those articles to heart. We practiced self flagellation. When we got to school we’d berate each other. “I can’t teach juniors Macbeth, if you don’t teach sophomores the structure of a Shakespearean play.” My problem was I couldn’t pronounce much less spell denouement.
Every article accused us of not doing our job; we simply had to do our job better. So we’d incorporate a vocabulary unit into our lesson plans, the history teacher would spend more time teaching geography as part of his unit on the great westward movement, the algebra teacher would try to squeeze in a review of the multiplication tables. And then the following week more articles, more finger waving, more of the old blame game, “Johnny can’t spell, nobody teaches civics, don’t sacrifice the classics for black lit, teach more black lit, and don’t water down the curriculum, ‘For God’s Sake.’”
In the seventies we had fought to open up the curriculum a bit. After that we would never quite agree on what or how or when to do anything. We were all beginning to do a bit of black lit; some of us did Jane Austen so we had the women’s lit thing covered (kind of). To Kill A Mockingbird was already popular. Seriously, it is a great book, an instant classic, but also, it was perfect for us. It’s written by a woman, with a female heroine, it was contemporary (almost), it was about a black guy (kind of), the reading level was not a problem and, most of all; the kids loved it (most of them). And we could easily talk about white prejudice because they were southern whites. It didn’t challenge white teachers.
To Kill A Mockingbird should have taught us something. If we had looked around, we could have found similar books. Instead of saying if they’re going to college they need to read…, when they take the state exam, they better have read…, to get ready for next year, they should read…. In retrospect, a lot of teaching was about missed opportunties.
And we’d ask, “Where are the new books, the extra resources and most importantly, the planning time? We need time to prep, to collaborate. We can’t team teach, redesign the curriculum, and teach brand new books without more planning time?”
Instead of answers, we’d get, “World lit is Euro-centric. You must take a multicultural approach. Teach the literature of all the peoples of the world and put it in a historical, geographical, and social context as well as literary perspective.” We respond, "You’re right, but you’ve got to remember we were taught the ‘New Criticism’ (I know not so new now.) We’re willing to change, but we need guidance and support.” But next week the press and the principal would both have a new idea or two. More homework, more thoroughly graded. Pop quizzes at the beginning of the period. It worked at Quigley Preperatory Seminary thirty years ago ( the 1950s). It will work here now.
In the meantime, we had five classes to teach, perhaps a study hall to supervise and a homeroom to monitor. In the meantime, what about sex? It was everywhere. Ken was out and about, unobtrusively, talking to a teacher here and there, everywhere. Fishing he called it. Not every cast lands a fish, not every cast gets a strike but a good fisherman always brings home the catch. Not to his wife of course. His wife had blurted out after a wee bit too much Chardonnay and after one of Ken’s slightly more blatant than usual flings, “I don’t want to hear anything from anybody about anything.”
Bill had assured Mary Ann that no, he wasn’t married and yes, he could see her often, but mainly after school, some evenings, but never on the weekend. When her girlfriends found out, "They asked, "Did she really believe him?” To themselves they said, “She couldn’t possibly, it was too obvious. She had to be desperate to believe such a creep—such a rat.” But, there was more than one woman who would have traded places with Mary Ann regardless of the future consequences and perhaps they could changed the outcome lived with the situation.
The funniest one of all of course and people laughed for years was when three very proper and very conscientious students went back to the art room on their lunch period, they quietly let themselves in and got started on their projects then they heard the distinct sounds of pent up passion finally released coming from the art supply closet. It was their art teacher and another teacher from down the hall. They quickly left, swearing never to tell a soul, and of course the rest is history.
One day we were all sitting around have coffee and someone said, “Hey where’s Joey? You know I haven’t seen Joey for a couple of days.” No one seemed to know. There were about six of us having coffee and as soon as the two women teachers left, one of the guys leaned forward, we all leaned forward and he said very seriously and very quietly, "Someone saw him over the weekend with Tonya." He was divorced. We all agreed that he had gotten screwed; we couldn’t imagine why anyone would cheat on Joey. Everybody loved him. And, of course, Tonya was a student. Everybody loved her, too. Not a great student but pretty good, attractive, but more than that self assured, mature, in our little world she seemed grown up, sophisticated. But of course she wasn’t any of those things. The boss got him transferred and that was the end as far as we were concerned. We never saw Tonya again and nobody ever asked about Tonya.
We worry about scope and sequence and ignore the obvious. Every class has its own chemistry. A morning class is plagued by tardiness, a late afternoon class suffers from mental fatigue, a class with more boys than girls or the reverse will act differently than a class with the normal distribution. A male teacher will affect the dynamics of a class as will a female teacher. And homophobia of course is rampant.
A straight teacher can walk into a classroom and before the bell talk about the trip he, his wife and kids made to Brookfield Zoo and most students are at least momentarily interested, but a gay teacher couldn’t walk into his classroom and talk about his and his partner’s trip to the same zoo. A gay teacher couldn’t talk about his partner.